Selling your home can feel like quite the burden—it's infamously one of life's biggest stressors. Moving everything out, deep-cleaning, and decluttering, on top of finding a good seller, all take months of time and effort. And still, one of the most important things during this process is to sell your home at a good price. Or better yet, the best price.
Once it's on the market, everything you've done to make the house you live in your home is generally a no-no. The sentimental height marks on the kitchen wall you've penciled in every year are a sign that the kitchen needs a facelift. The dent in the living room tiles from when a piece of furniture you thrifted got dropped is a signal the flooring needs replaced.
If a house looks too damaged, you may get a lower offer, which is why sellers will do just about anything to make their house more appealing for potential buyers, from gutting the kitchen to spending thousands on staging. More importantly, you want to get the best return on investment (ROI), aka spending as little as possible to increase the asking price.
Why Painting Your Home Is the No. 1 Thing You Should Do Before Selling
The family that is moving into your house wants to be able to imagine what their own version of home looks like in this space. They need a blank slate to let their imagination run free, so it’s very important to give that to them. Re-painting your house is the easiest and cheapest way to do this.
A survey done with the Better Homes & Gardens Real Estate department revealed that 99% of the participating agents said that minor cosmetic upgrades, like fresh paint and updated light fixtures increase the perceived value of the home. Within these minor upgrades, 80% of them agree that painting your home has a positive impact on its value.
“When potential buyers walk through a home, they want to be able to envision what their things will look like in that space," one BHGRE agent says. "When homes are too full and walls too decorative with the current owners’ things, it limits their ability to imagine their belongings in that space. I always recommend decluttering and painting as a must-do."
An unpainted house looks like an unkempt house, and an unkempt house is an unwanted house. Even if they go through with the purchase, buyers can ask for a cut on the asking price to account for what it would cost them to touch up the paint job or even use it to pad their negotiation to down-sell—better to catch it now than after the buyers slap a $10,000 price tag on it.
You're more likely to get a bid if the space looks moldable to others' tastes—you will want to consult your broker on the best color to paint your home in your area. Neutral colors that suit many types of design styles are preferred over bold colors with a lot of personality. So if that means you have to paint over the beautiful plum you chose for the living room, so be it.
If you had extensive painting done in the last few years and the job still looks new, consider pressure washing the walls before showing it to potential buyers—it’s a small extra step and several hundreds of dollars cheaper than repainting your house.
